Show and audio
One factor that is new with the Nano is its 16:10 side ratio. Which means its 13-inch show is taller than older ThinkPads and allows you to see extra directly. I like it — actually all laptops ought to go 16:10. You possibly can see extra emails, tweets or memes in your display directly, it’s simply higher. It’s value noting that Lenovo is considerably late to this, since Dell and Apple have used this side ratio for awhile now. HP’s newest Spectre x360 13 continues to be caught at 16:9, although.
Dimensions apart, the Nano’s show is respectable sufficient. It’s is a 2K panel that helps Dolby Imaginative and prescient for richer colours and tops out at 450 nits of brightness. It’s an enchancment over the X1 Carbon (2019), which was dim and lackluster, however not as luxurious because the Galaxy Guide Flex’s QLED display. It’s value stating at this level too that the Nano doesn’t have a touchscreen. However, that’s effective because it’s a clamshell laptop computer.
Lenovo geared up the Nano with a Dolby Atmos speaker system and 4 360-degree microphones. That is meant to make it simpler on your contacts to listen to different folks in your room if wanted. You should utilize Lenovo’s specialised software program to optimize for whenever you’re chatting along with your mother and father in your sofa and wish them to listen to your youngsters gathered across the espresso desk, for instance. Although none of my coworkers seen an enormous distinction in how I sounded on our calls, I did discover the audio system surprisingly loud. As regular with most laptops, the Nano’s audio lacked bass and sounded considerably hole, however it is a category-wide difficulty and never an issue with simply this system.
The Nano additionally has a brand new presence-detection characteristic that can wake the laptop computer up whenever you sit down in entrance of it so you may unlock it and get again to work faster. This makes use of an “ultra-wide band” radar sensor with a 60-degree discipline of view and usually works nicely. Corporations like HP have offered this feature of their units, however from my testing the Nano’s implementation is probably the most constant and best to make use of. I didn’t have to show any settings on and each time I walked away and returned to my desk the display lit as much as welcome me.
Cherlynn Low / Engadget
Keyboard and trackpad
One thing that usually units ThinkPads other than different laptops is their keyboards and on this entrance the Nano delivers too. As anticipated, the buttons listed here are well-spaced and comfortable, with deep journey and satisfying suggestions. I’m not a fan of the pointing stick within the center, nevertheless it was straightforward sufficient to disable. I additionally want Lenovo switched the place of the Operate and Management keys on the underside left to place Management on the very finish, since that’s what I’m used to on most Home windows keyboards.
Although keyboards are amongst Lenovo’s strengths, the corporate’s trackpads have not been as spectacular. They’re typically much less responsive than Microsoft’s, Dell’s and even Samsung’s and the X1 Nano is equally sluggish. It felt just like the cursor was dragging as I swiped about on the touchpad. It’s not a significant difficulty, for the reason that trackpad works effective and you need to use multi-finger gestures for shortcuts nicely, too. However it could be good to see Lenovo enhance this in future machines.
Efficiency and battery life
As anticipated, the X1 Nano is a succesful laptop computer that stored up with my regular workflow of too many Chrome tabs with numerous messaging and picture enhancing apps within the background. I additionally managed to take down an enemy workforce on League Of Legends with no lag, although because it makes use of Intel’s Xe graphics card the Nano isn’t nice for extra taxing video games or heavy video enhancing. It’s good to see that Lenovo didn’t need to sacrifice efficiency in change for the Nano’s mild weight, and the two.1GHz Eleventh-gen Intel Core i7 chipset with 16GB of RAM right here stored issues operating easily.
All through the work day, the Nano’s battery degree declined slowly, main me to count on it to final fairly lengthy. However as soon as I began taking part in some movies (and a spherical of LoL), battery life tanked. On our video rundown check, the Nano’s results of 9 hours and a pair of minutes is shorter than most ultraportables we’ve examined. It barely meets the standards for Intel’s Evo program, which says that qualifying laptops should final no less than 9 hours, however that’s based mostly on a Full HD display.
Although the Nano’s runtime was disappointing, I used to be pleasantly stunned at how shortly it recharged. Lenovo says its Fast Cost expertise will get you to 80 p.c of juice in an hour, which is consistent with my expertise.
Cherlynn Low / Engadget
Wrap-up
For a laptop computer that’s so mild, the X1 Nano is impressively succesful. Lenovo sacrificed surprisingly little to make the lightest ThinkPad but and even managed to enhance its show and audio system. Positive, battery life is an enormous trade-off, however in case you have been on the lookout for one thing to throw in your ebook bag that wouldn’t make it too heavy and don’t want one thing that lasts all day, the ThinkPad X1 Nano is value contemplating. Simply know that at $1,399, you’ve fairly just a few different choices from Samsung, Apple and Dell that is perhaps better-looking, last more and have superior screens at about the identical value.
